January 13, 2016

Back to School with Warehouse Stationery

I love stationery. I always have. Office, school, personal... It's crisp clean newness and the smell, oh the smell... I love it all! When Madeline was sent home with her year two stationery list on the last day of school I was pretty excited at the prospect of taking her to pick out all of her supplies. I realise this isn't everyone's idea of a fun morning out but I love it!

But back to school time can be an expensive time for families with school fees, uniforms & shoes, sports fees and extracurricular activities plus school stationery all due at the same time. And there seems to be a definite exponential increase in stationery costs with age - BYOD anyone? This year Warehouse Stationery invited us to do our school stationery shopping with them to see how affordable and easy it could be.

Now, if you're not interested in stationery shopping at all, then I'll stop you here and say that you can order online at www.warehousestationery.co.nz. Just enter in what you need and they'll send your order straight to your door. Easy peezy. But since I love stationery this is the instore experience.

This was our rather simple looking stationery list. But what became quickly apparent is that the lovely teachers who put this list together are not stationers and their product descriptions were at best a little unclear.

To confuse matters, there are two competing brands of exercise books who both use different product codes for the same exercise books.﻿ And there are oh-so-many different exercise books!

Thank goodness that Warehouse Stationery is one step ahead with these are these handy conversion charts located at the exercise book stand. I would have been totally lost without it!

After the exercise books were sorted we moved on to some of the supplies that gave Maddie a little freedom of choice. This is her first year being allowed a pencil case with her own supplies (rather than pooled group stationery) and hopefully by choosing her own supplies she'll take ownership and care of them. And it's neat to see her individual style shine through in her choices.

She loved the Kookie range and hummed and harred over which ruler to choose. Purple with unicorns and rainbows won out over pink with kittens. A Kookie ruler costs around $2.99 which I didn't think was bad at all but if you are really sticking to a budget, you can pick up a standard clear Impact ruler on special for just 0.49 cents. There are options like this every step of the way. I love the Kookie tropical fruits pencil sharpener she chose for just $1.99.

Her choice of ruler and pencil sharpener was nothing compared to the agony of choosing a pencil case! She begged for two pencil cases because she just couldn't make up her mind. This sequence of photos cracks me up - the pain was real! She settled on a pretty navy floral Cath Kidston style pencil case for her belongings.

Like mother, like daughter - all of the fashionery caught her eye. Sadly I couldn't indulge her in fluffy pens. While we had a little bit of freedom in some areas, we had a list to stick to and I didn't want to be the Mum that got frowned at by the teacher for sending her child along with inappropriate, non-regulation stationery on her first day of school. She's made a mental note about the fluffy pen for her birthday instead!

One of the great things that Warehouse Stationery does is a 20% price match called the Parents Price Pledge. If you find a cheaper identical stocked item on a quoted stationery list then Warehouse Stationery will beat it by 20%. We didn't have any big ticket purchases to make this year but if you're in the throws of BYOD (bring your own device) then every cent counts and the Warehouse Stationery 20% price match is a excellent shopping incentive which I'll be looking in to when our time comes.

Half an hour later (and that was me dragging it out as I was browsing for over half of it) we were done. To top off our shopping experience we also made sure to mention our school at the checkout. Anytime anyone in the community shops at Warehouse Stationery throughout the year and mentions the name of a school they support (primary, intermediate or college) at the checkout, the nominated school will receive a cashback contribution which the I know all schools will gratefully receive.

The total stationery bill came of $102.80 which works out to just a little over $25.00 per term for stationery which I think is pretty reasonable for a whole year of learning. We also saved $13.24 through instore specials.

And again, like mother, like daughter, Madeline was pleased as punch with her stationery supplies. She oohed and aahed over them all the way home.

I definitely recommend checking out Warehouse Stationery for your school stationery supplies. I was really impressed by our shopping experience - the selection, the affordable prices, the Parents Price Pledge (especially if you're shopping for BYOD!) and the school cashback promotion. Warehouse Stationery was a one stop shop for all of our school stationery supplies.